Great Britain and the Belgian Railways Dispute of 1869

Abstract

IN the year I864, Great Britain's Continental policy underwent one of those abrupt changes which, on so many occasions, have caused misunderstanding and bewilderment in Europe. After five years of spirited meddling in Continental affairs, Britain withdrew to a position of almost complete isolation, and the next seven years, years of revolutionary importance in Europe, her influence was almost negligible. Ever since the Crimean War, the desire abstention from Continental troubles had been growing in Great Britain. The Radicals, led by Cobden and Bright, had long urged the application of the laissez-faire principle to foreign as well as commercial policy; and the Derby wing of the Tory party was already beginning to argue that the national interest lay not in Europe but overseas.1 But the growing desire isolation was given a great stimulus in the years I863-I864 as a result of the anger and humiliation caused by the policy pursued by Palmerston and Russell in the Polish and Danish crises. The swashbuckling manner in which the two, elder statesmen had rushed to the aid of the Poles and the Danes, only to abandon them in the face of Russian and Prussian resistance, was galling to Englishmen of both parties. Irritated at the weakening of British prestige, they criticized the policy which had been followed since i859 as lacking in consistency and basic principle and demanded a thorough reform. In the great debate on foreign policy which was held in the House of Commons in July, i864, it was made apparent that the days of Palmerstonian diplomacy were past and those of isolation were at hand. The keynote was struck by one of the Radicals when he announced that it was time for replacing that muddling, dishonest system of apparent intervention . . . by an honest, dignified and plainspoken system of non-intervention;2 and repeatedly, as the debate went on, speakers on both sides of the House returned to that phrase, describing nonintervention as the traditional policy of Great Britain and the one to which the nation must now return. By the fourth night of the debate it was clear that Britain was about to enter a period in